Fundació ACE researcher Sonia Moreno-Grau has been recognised with one of the international awards for the best research work by young researchers at the prestigious AAT-AD/PD™ Congress on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases 2020, which each year presents the latest advances in treatment, translational R&D, early diagnosis, drug development and clinical trials in this field.
The prestigious international conference AAT-AD/PD™ was supposed to be held these days in Vienna, but it is finally being developed by telematic means as a consequence of the crisis by the Coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. Sonia Moreno-Grau has received this award for her contribution to the scientific work entitled Autosomal recessive Alzheimer's disease (arAD): homozygosity mapping of genomic regions containing arAD loci.
To carry out this study, the most exhaustive to date, Fundació ACE research team has analysed the genome of 22,549 people, thanks to the collaboration with Washington University in Sant Louis (USA).
The research focused on studying the genetics of people with a higher level of consanguinity, identifying those who had recessive factors, in which the father and mother have the same mutation of the genome. This has made it possible to locate a new gene, SPON1, associated with the disease. This gene is involved in the process of producing amyloid protein, the most studied protein so far as a possible cause of Alzheimer's.
These findings open the door to the discovery of new treatments focused on the effects that these genes cause.
Dr. Sonia Moreno-Grau expressed her gratitude for the award and pointed out that for her "it is a real motivation to continue growing and improving in the field of Alzheimer's research".
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